Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

Millions of people suffer from tissue/organ injuries or damage, such as cartilage injuries and heart attacks. Tissue/organ transplantation is the gold standard to treat some of these types of injuries but is severely restricted as an option due to the limited availability of donor tissue/organs. Tissue engineering aims to produce tissue/organ substitutes or scaffolds to improve upon current treatment approaches, thus providing a permanent solution to damaged tissue/organs. An analogy would be going to the mechanic to buy new parts for your car to replace those that are broken or no longer functioning. Successes in tissue engineering would mean that someone who unfortunately suffers a tissue/organ injury could go to a hospital, have the engineered scaffold implanted into their body, and then later completely recover the function of a healthy body with the help of the engineered scaffold. Producing such tissue scaffolds, however, has proven to be a challenging task and progress towards clinical applications has been limited. An important barrier is the inability to fabricate scaffolds with mechanical properties that are appropriate for promoting cell growth and tissue regeneration and that can eventually support the growth of tissues with mechanical properties matching those of native tissue. As such, mechanical properties are of importance in tissue engineering. In this application, we request a contactless mechanical tester that can be used to precisely measure and characterize the viscoelasticity (a mechanical property) of biomaterials, fabricated scaffolds, and biological (or native tissue) specimens in a contactless and non-destructive manner. The requested instrument will enable us to develop scaffolds with mechanical properties appropriate for tissue engineering applications, including myocardial infarction (or heart attack) treatment, articular cartilage repair, tooth defect treatment, and bone defect treatment, and for combating infectious diseases; such applications are being actively pursued at the University of Saskatchewan. As such, the primary stakeholders of the research are the large number of Canadians who suffer from tissue/organ injuries as well as health researchers/ practitioners/ industry partners in related areas. This research will also involve the training of graduate students to meet the increasing demand for highly qualified personnel in the fields of tissue engineering and health care.